BECKMAN WEATHERS CRAZY DAY TO LEAD FUNNY CAR QUALIFYING

Written by Susan Wade, photo by Roger Richards    Sat, 2019-04-27 08:00

 

Think your day at the office was nuts?

Jack Beckman probably could top that.

Here’s the Funny Car class’ provisional No. 1 qualifier’s account of how he ended up atop the leaderboard for the NGK Spark Plugs NHRA Four-Wide Nationals at zMAX Dragway at Concord, N.C., with a 3.891-second, 321.41-mph 1,000-foot pass:

“We’re in the pits. It starts pouring. We wait. They dry it up.

“We warm the car. It hails. We wait. They dry it up.

“We pull the car up to the staging lanes. I get in. I get strapped in. We tow up. There’s a delay. We get out of the car.

“They’re ready to go. I get strapped in again. There’s a delay.

“So we tow back to the pits. We take the cylinder heads off. We lower the compression ratio. We warm the thing back up again.

“We’ve done all this stuff and I haven’t done a burnout yet,” Beckman said. “And it’s a very odd feeling. You normally don’t work that hard and your car hasn’t been on the racetrack.

“I feel a lot of respect and a lot of pity for the track crew today. They had two complete rainouts they had to clean up from. And then pollen comes from out of nowhere and it’s coating the track in dust. I’d rather it be wet than dusty,” he said, not feeling particularly blessed that he got it both ways and then some Friday. “We will never run when it’s wet – dusty you’re not sure about. They did the prudent thing. After they ran one set of nitro Funny Cars, they sent us all back to the pits . . . to wait for the wind to die down. I’m so appreciative. I know they’re not going to send me down a racetrack that that hasn’t been looked at with 100-percent scrutiny.”

Finally, he got to go through the normal paces – and he took advantage of his chance.

“Then we tow up there and nobody’s run a respectable run yet. I think 4.4 has been the quickest time at that point,” he said.

Thinking back on his many years in the professional ranks, Beckman recalled the times racers – all racers – wait around all day for race-ready weather then, in his words, “stink.” He said it’s “disappointing to invest that much time and energy and not put on a good show for the fans but for our team, too.”

But that wasn’t the case for the Infinite hero Dodge driver for Don Schumacher Racing.  

“I’m telling you, at 300 feet I knew,” he said.

He knew he was on a great pass, one that probably felt more surreal, given the circumstances preceding it.

“That thing was stuck [to the track]. It was pulling. It was the quickest 60-foot [time] I’ve ever had,” Beckman said.” It actually had way more in it. It just wore the clutch out of it at half-track and wound up dropping a hole [cylinder]. It was just on a beast of a run.”

Beckman said his delight was not in possibly staking claim to his 25th No. 1 qualifying position. It was in seeing the happy faces of his crew members, who he said “work just as hard whether we’re No. 1 or No. 19.” He said, “Tonight it’ll be much easier for them to tuck that car in, knowing it’s No. 1.”

Whether it remains No. 1 for Sunday’s eliminations doesn’t concern Beckman, he said: “I don’t know if 3.89 will hold, but you know what? I don’t care if it holds. It gives the other teams a mark to shoot for. And maybe more importantly, it gives US something to swing for. You always, when you unload with a good run, have the luxury of swinging harder on the next run.”

With a four-wide race in these weather-influenced situations, he said the not-so-ideal reality is that teams won’t get a look at all four lanes. In traditional two-wide formatted races, a driver will get a chance to check out each lane. But that won’t happen this weekend. Beckman said his crew chiefs, Dean Antonelli and John Medlen, will have to decided whether their strategy is to maintain the No. 1 starting spot when the field is set for runoffs or gather data for as many lanes as possible with full runs to maximize their race-day readiness.

And life at the office was back to normal.

 

 
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